Saturday, November 17, 2007

Horror vacuii 2

The following quote from a book review quotes Eliot's reaction to Gurdjieff. It seems like the reviewer has categorized Eliot's attitude well.
...
the publisher's reports - relaxed, unbuttoned, but (on the basis of the samples Schuchard gives) carefully thought out none the less - give insight into what Eliot thought about the barren shores of mysticism. "The addiction to Asiatic mysticism, separated from Asiatic religion, produced... something which to me is very much ... repellent in Gurdjieff and Ouspensky."
from
http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/classics/story/0,,2212357,00.html

and more:
"Eliot's suspicions were aroused by any form of mysticism which had not evolved out of, and was not supported by, a religion."

Ah yes, mysticism not supported by a religion. What could this mean -- what could a mysticism be which was not supported by --- words. And yet what mysticism COULD be supported in any healthy way by ---words???

It is a barren place we seek, barren of the past, barren of words, ...

Upcoming topics

in our blog about Jan Cox.

The arguments that suggest his significance is of the century defining kind.

A glance of a history of mysticism----what can such a phrase mean? His words on the subject
ref other mystics, his points about history

What is history---the nature of progress

Conspiracies -- their nature, the nonsense of thinking an ordinary person could pursue such, or that you as an ordinary thinker could detect such, his interest in, his hints about (Peru?)

His significance in terms of American history on the political level. Did he give Jimmy Carter the idea to run for president.

The Nature of Ordinary Thought

The nature of ordinary mentation

Ordinary thought, that mentation of which most people are unaware of an alternative, operates solely on the principle of polar opposition, and this is a main reason it cannot be relied upon to assess reality. There are uncountable and unaccountable so called causes for any (so-called) event. In these circumstances to single out ONE cause, and think something has been explained is illusory. The complexity of the surrounding and internals worlds of man is simplified by the mind or the ordinary intellect could not function. The intellect has a proper function, but that is not describing reality. The failure to understand the appropriate uses of the intellect is a source of pain ultimately.

The mind of man simplifies reality, and enables itself to function, by defining any and everything in terms of opposition. It never really specifies anything at all, in itself (the things self is what I mean). It uses words and these words only make sense at all if they are defined in contrast to something else. Take the word "table." A definition opposes this piece of furniture to a chair, or to the floor. This is called binary logic. It makes computers work fine. Computers do not assess reality either.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Fanfare for the common dog

My dog belongs to the same pack as Dmitri Shostakovich and Aaron Copland. Both composers have inspired in Sunny the sing along urge. It is so cute, -- I did not say euphonious, I said cute. Last night on the telly we watched a special on wolves, and the sound of howling puzzled and riveted him. But only at the sound of the masters did he add his voice to the pack.

The sound of my dog gurgling to classical symphonies presents the spectre of gaps, gaps of which if we are unaware, we risk a punitive ignorance. The gap I mean is the gap between what you consider the known world and what the world actually is. The mystic participates in point blank reality, on occasion. The distance between ordinary humanity and someone like someone like Jan Cox is at least the distance between a canine and a classical composer.

This is not elitism. The world is as it is. I did not invent this planet. I am merely trying to point with fluffy words to a certain spotless reality. As inhabitants of this planet it behooves us to struggle to know what is. If for no other reason than to avoid getting our heads knocked through ignorance of the surrounding structure.

Monday, November 12, 2007

Walking the Plank

Jan Cox did not, to my recollection, ever dwell on a peculiar resistance to pursuing This Kind of Stuff, as he sometimes called the quest. Now perhaps he did in Magnus Machina, and I just missed it, but regardless, I am referring to what some mystical writers called the horror vacuii. The picture that came to mind is of walking across a wooden floor. Your feet may easily stay on one plank and your transit be the kind of mechanical repetition that vanishes without notice. But imagine this----your path is the same but you are crossing on a plank which has no adjoining lumber. You are not crossing a floor, but a narrow beam. For most, (not all) this would immediately change the stakes. For some a mechanical motion would become a challenging feat.

The balance that was careless and effective, becomes a goal perhaps out of reach, and the failure to attain it has penalties. The awareness of emptiness can become debilitating. The surroundings which insulated one, but were unnoticed, become desirable in their absence. This physical picture also outlines a mental complexity when the action is not physical but mental---the action is maintaining one's attention, and the sketch just drawn can illuminate the resistance to keeping one's balance on the mental beam of focused attention. The barest glimpse of success, the diminishment of thought,can be repellent and the glimpse exemplify a meaning of the phrase horror vacuii. One reason Jan may not have mentioned it is that I am wrong. Regardless, my story points to a nice summary. Walking the plank, maintaining a focused attention, implies death: a death which may be scary, but the death talked about here is the death of the irrelevant and unnecessary, -- the death of the self.

Of course he did talk about the misconceptions surrounding this phrase, the death of the self, and we can discuss that soon. Of course you could just go to his web site, now. Soon I will be linking this blog to his site but for now you could just type, www.jancox.com.